People call it courage and bravery
Image credit: New Zealand Government, Office of the Governor-General, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Last Friday was the International Transgender Day of Visibility! 🏳️🌈 To celebrate transgender people from around the world, we are featuring a quote from Georgina Beyer, the first openly transgender person in the world to be elected to a mayoral office and as a member of parliament.
Georgina Beyer (1957-2023) was an actor and politician in New Zealand. She is best known for being the first openly transgender person to successfully stand in local and national elections in the world.
Beyer was born in Wellington, New Zealand and moved to Australia as a young adult before returning to her home town in New Zealand. Upon her return, she found work as an actor. Her role in the TV drama Jewel's Darl earned her a nomination for the best female performance for a television drama GOFTA award. Beyer then became a part of Wellington's gay nightclub scene, initially as a performer, then later as a sex worker.
She first became involved in local politics when she moved to the town of Carterton in the Wairarapa district of New Zealand. She was first elected to the local council, then ran for mayor in the 1995 Carterton mayoral election. She became the first openly transgender, first female, and first ethnic minority to be elected mayor of Carterton, a traditionally predominantly white conservative town. She was re-elected to her post in 1998 with 90% of the vote. Beyer ran in the New Zealand parliamentary elections in 1999, supported by the Labour party. She received the majority of the vote and became the first openly transgender member of parliament in the world. Throughout her political career, Beyer was the supporter of progressive policies, including prostitution law reform, civil unions and minority rights.
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Hello all! I did my Laidlaw Programme at Durham University between 2019-2021. My research project focused on evaluating the immigration and asylum system of the EU through a case study of the 2015 immigration crisis. Following the completion of my undergraduate LLB degree I moved to London to pursue my postgraduate LLM study at Queen Mary University of London.
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